Easter Sunday...Finally

I can't believe I still haven't posted these Easter pictures...I started this awhile ago and I guess I never finished. I have so much more blogging to do...but no time! I'll get it done sometime!

The kids woke up really early on Easter, so Garrett and I told them to go back to their rooms and read books for awhile until we were ready to wake up. I felt bad because they were so excited! So maybe 20 minutes later, I heard talking downstairs and I knew they had found their baskets and were going through their stuff. (Turns out it was just Lydia and Paige--the troublemakers). So I got Garrett up and made them come back upstairs and start all over again. Our Easter Bunny leaves a trail of jelly beans for the kids to follow and at the end of the trail are their Easter Baskets.

Bella just waking up from all the excitement.

Gathering the jellybeans from the trail.
Paige's Loot

Bella loving her little bunny from the "big bunny".

Lydia's Loot

Maggie's Loot

Easter Baskets and Easter Dresses

Bella in her Easter Dress

I gave them new jammies this year for Easter, too since

they all needed a new pair anyway.

Decorating Easter Eggs

I know I'm a bit late with the Easter pictures, but I thought I'd post them anyways...

The finished product

Fun Easter Crafts

These are a few things we did to get ready for Easter.

This first idea I got from my friend Lisa, and it was really easy to do. The girls needed something cute and Eastery to put in their rooms, so I thought this was perfect. Lisa had used little terra cotta pots that she painted pink and white, but I found these little pots at Target for $1 each, so we used these. Thanks for the idea Lisa!
















This other idea I found on someone's blog or off of sugardoodle.net. I can't remember. So, if I borrowed this idea from you, let me know so I can give you credit for it. It was really cute.

They are Easter S'mores in a jar. Pretty easy to prepare and I'm sure will be yummy to eat. (We're eating ours tonight!) Paige helped me make these--another fun and easy project!

More Easter pictures to come!

Daddy Daughter Date

Garrett has been wanting to take the girls out on one-on-one dates for some time now. Friday he took Maggie out to dinner and to the new Hannah Montana movie. Maggie gets really excited about these things and insisted that they dress up for their "date". She's always been one to dress up for things. She used to wear a fancy dress every year for her birthday and also when it was her sister's birthdays as well.

Garrett let her pick the restaurant, so she chose The Spaghetti Factory. She and I love that place--mainly for their spinach tortellini. It is the best! Garrett said she was so excited and that she talked and talked all through dinner. So cute! They then went to see the Hannah Montana movie, which she loved because Hannah/Miley was a cowgirl in the country. (Maggie loves cowgirls and horses, etc.) Garrett even said it was a pretty good movie. (He may deny that later!)

When they got home that night, she was giddy and dancing and couldn't stop talking about how much fun she had. She was on cloud 9! I am so glad that Garrett came up with this idea and is putting it into action. The girls love him so much and I'm glad that they can spend this time together. Lydia's got a date this coming Friday.

Beautiful Weekend Weather

This past weekend was like summer! We loved it--every second! Apart from watching Conference, which we recorded and watched on and off, we were outside. The temperatures were in the 70's and the sun was shining! I cannot wait for permanent summer weather. We got a little taste, but rain is predicted for Easter weekend--makes it hard for Easter Egg Hunts. Since it was so nice, we got out our hammock, a swing for Bella (which she loved) and we barbecued a couple of times. I even got a little sunburn because I insisted on sitting in the sun--but didn't really think about getting sunscreen. Oh, well...



This was the first year that I've ever done anything for my kids to work on during General Conference. I made folders for them with pictures of various topics inside for them to color while listening. I also copied and cut up little pictures of all the apostles and first presidency. As they were listening, they were supposed to glue the picture onto the topic page that the apostle was speaking on. Maggie's really the only one who did that. They all colored the packets and did a semi-good job of listening. But, hey...they're kids and I know they can't sit still and listen to all four hours of conference. On the last session, we played conference Bingo that Lydia had gotten from her primary teachers the week before. That was kind of fun, too. I'm glad I tried something this year...there are so many fun packets and activities related to conference out there...so I can't really say that there wasn't anything to do. It was a good conference and my favorite talk was Elder Holland's by far! His message was amazing and I was so moved by his emotions!

On another topic...Tuesday morning we were downstairs eating breakfast before the girls left for school when we kept hearing noises coming from what sounded like our cupboard above our microwave. Something was definitely moving around and we could hear animal noises. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how a squirrel (which is what it sounded like) got into our cupboard. After Garrett investigated a little more, we figured out that birds were flying into our vent that connects to the microwave and were building a nest inside. We thought one might be stuck in the vent. But we had somebody from "Critter Control" come and take care of it. He said he found a nest in the vent after he scared away the birds. He showed me a picture of it and it didn't look too big, but he said it filled half a trashbag. So, he taped the vent shut and will come back to put a screen over the top in a couple of days. I was pretty worried at first thinking it might be a mouse or a squirrel stuck in our walls. That would not have been fun.

Lydia can read!

Lydia has had a great year in kindergarten. We love her teacher, Mrs. Bayley--she is so good with her students--very organized, gets involved with them and has fun ideas. Lydia loves going to school and has learned a ton! She can read books now--pretty basic books, but is very proud when she can get through a book on her own. I filmed her reading one of her library books to document it! It's a longer video, but I wanted to film her reading the whole book. We're very proud of her!